If you've read up on , perfected the art of , and even , then you need to invest in a pizza stone. These nifty round or rectangular slabs help to cook the pie evenly and crisp the crust, and they can even shorten the baking time thanks to their superior heat distribution. But if you're hoping you can wash your stone with soap and water — or even stick it in the dishwasher — you are, unfortunately, quite wrong.
Because pizza stones are typically made of clay, ceramic, or cordierite mineral, the surface is porous and absorbent, meaning that whatever chemicals are in your dish soap can stick around inside the stone. That means the next time you go to bake a pizza on it, some of the residue could very well transfer into the pie and affect how your dough tastes. Do you want your next pizza to taste like green apple dish soap? Didn't think so.
All you need for a basic maintenance cleaning after each use is a clean, damp dish towel to wipe away anything that remains on the stone. Any caked-on pieces of dough or cheese can be removed by a designated putty knife or kitchen scraper. Removing grease stains from pizza stones, plus some big no-nos Pizza stones might also get stained with grease, but this shouldn't damage their effectiveness or cause issues with your pies.
In other words, you don't actually have to remove these stains from your stone, but if you want to for aesthetic reasons, you should do so carefully. That means not using anything too scratchy (like a steel wool scru.
